Saturday, March 2, 2013

How to make homemade hand soap

After the birth of my son, I noticed that we go through gallons and gallons of hand soap each year because babies are composed of 90% germs and 10% pudding. With the rising cost of basic toiletries in general, I began dreading my trips to Target and how much I would have to fork over to maintain my hand washing addiction. Then I figured out how to make my own hand soap for a little over one dollar per gallon.

2 teaspoons liquid glycerin (found at most pharmacies for about $4 for 6 ounces)

big pot

spoon

immersion blender or handheld mixer

Start by grating 2 bars of soap into a big pot. Cover the two cups of soap shavings with 16 cups of water (128 ounces) and add 2 teaspoons of liquid glycerin to the mixture. Heat on medium while stirring continuously until the shavings melt completely.

Once the bubbles form a yin yang symbol, the soap has achieved a perfect balance and can be removed from the heat and left to cool overnight. Once cooled, it will be a gelatinous blob and you will assume my recipe is a piece of garbage. Grab your immersion blender or hand held mixer and whip the ever loving crap out of that soap. There, see I told you. Now pour it into an old plastic container and refill your soap dispensers as needed. You have just saved the Earth and your wallet some misery.

2 comments:

Sonya - you are too funny. This is perfect timing though because we are all out of hand soap and I was thinking how I hate spending money on certain things that shouldn't be as expensive as they are...like hand soap! This would be fun to do with the girls....awesome. Gonna try this! I wonder if I could put this in one of the foaming dispensers with a little extra water and making it foam? Will try that.

Fortunately for you, Becki, I happen to have a plastic container hoarding collection, including a foaming soap dispenser. I mixed up 1 tablespoon of soap with 2 tablespoons of water and it successfully foamed. I will warn you though, this mixture doesn't lather in the same way that store-bought hand soap does. The recipe I posted feels more watery than the store bought stuff. But it definitely gets your hands clean and leaves them smelling soapy fresh.